SpaceX Just Did Something It Had Never Done Before With Starship

By Jagjagran | 5 October 2026

For years, Starship has been the rocket that blows up. Spectacular launches, fiery crashes, pieces raining into the sea. Elon Musk's giant silver spaceship became almost famous for failing.

Not anymore.

In the last days of September, SpaceX finally did what it had been chasing for years: it sent Starship — the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built — all the way to orbit. And this time, it did real work up there, releasing a batch of its new Starlink internet satellites. That's the first time Starship has ever deployed a payload. A genuine milestone.

Let me explain why this is such a big deal.

Starship isn't just another rocket. It's designed to be fully reusable, like an aeroplane that lands, refuels and flies again. If that works at scale, the cost of reaching space could fall dramatically. And that changes everything — from internet satellites to Moon missions to Musk's lifelong dream of sending humans to Mars.

The failures mattered too, by the way. SpaceX follows a "fly, fail, fix, repeat" philosophy. Each dramatic explosion taught the engineers something. People mocked the approach. But here we are — the thing is now reaching orbit.

The timing matters for another reason. NASA is counting on a version of Starship to land American astronauts back on the Moon later this decade, under the Artemis programme. Every successful flight makes that goal feel a little more real, and a little less like a promise that keeps slipping.

And it wasn't the only space news this week. On 1 October, NASA and SpaceX launched a fresh crew of astronauts up to the International Space Station — another reminder of how routine human spaceflight has quietly become.

But Starship is the one to watch. For so long it was a punchline. Now it's climbing toward orbit with cargo in its belly.

Sometimes the rockets that fail the most spectacularly are the ones that end up taking us the furthest.

Sources: Spaceflight Now, SpaceX updates.